


Something Worth Pursuing

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Banter, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Kissing, Kitchen Sex, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Seduction, Table Sex, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 18:02:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17166686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: In the aftermath of the Two Davids Job and the scattering of the team, Eliot finds himself seeking sanctuary with Dr. Maggie Collins.





	Something Worth Pursuing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Soquilii9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soquilii9/gifts).



> It's been a long time since someone raised the idea of Maggie and Eliot - I hope this does your thoughts justice! 
> 
> Thank you for playing with us!

He wasn’t the sort of man who let his guard down easily, Maggie decided, as her pencil skimmed the cream-colored surface of a page in her sketchbook. Four months after she’d first set eyes on Adam Sinclair, the only thing she knew for certain about the man currently tangled in her bedsheets was that his name wasn’t actually Adam Sinclair.

 _Eliot Spencer_ worked with her ex-husband; doing what, Maggie still hadn’t entirely figured out. Whatever Nate was into, it wasn’t completely legal, no matter how hard he tried to justify it to her. Grifters, hackers and thieves, and Jim Sterling doing his best to put Nate in jail – if she thought about the whole mess for too long, it made her head ache.

Her artist’s eye clocked a small, reddish twist of skin covering Eliot’s right collar bone. _Gunshot wound,_ Maggie acknowledged, pressing slightly harder with her pencil-point to capture the contrast between the scar and Eliot’s normal skin tone. He’d admitted as much the night before, when he was lying beneath her and she was doing her best to drive him to distraction with her tongue. He’d admitted a lot of things during those hours, but not what had finally brought him to her door, and ultimately into her bed.

Of course, she hadn’t asked. Having confirmation that the attraction she’d felt for him had been mutually felt, and not part of some con masterminded by her ex-husband, had been enough for her in the moment she’d had to decide whether to let Eliot in or turn him away for good. _That won’t last._ Questions would need to be asked and answered on both sides, and she would need to figure out for herself exactly what she wanted out of whatever this turned out to be.

Glancing up, Maggie realized belatedly that she was being watched – lost in her process, she’d missed the moment when Eliot had shifted from sleeping to wakefulness. “Good morning,” she said gently, offering him a soft smile. For whatever reason, he was still mostly relaxed; actually hovering on the edge of falling back asleep.

She didn’t want to disturb that; now that she had him even partially awake, Maggie was more certain than ever that it was the kind of trust Eliot Spencer didn’t give easily or often.

“Good morning,” he answered her finally, his voice still thick with sleep. “What’re you doing?”

She felt her smile grow mischievous, even as her body tensed protectively around her work. “Just sketching.”

 _That_ managed to break the spell like she suspected few things could short of an armed attack. “Oh God,” he groaned, covering his eyes with an arm and turning away from her. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re embarrassed,” Maggie countered, setting aside her book and pencil and pushing to her feet. “I may not know much about you, Eliot Spencer, but you don’t strike me as…” She yelped, startled, as he reached across his body to grab her by the arm. One smooth roll across his hip later and Maggie was on her back, hands pinned above her head, and Eliot looking down at her – a definite heat stirring in the depths of his blue eyes.

“Hi,” he said, his smile positively wicked now.

She pouted at him. “You cheated.”

His lips pursed as his eyes ticked downward, taking in the flimsiness of her robe. “We never talked rules,” he said. Nimble fingers had the knot at her waist undone in between one breath and the next. Maggie swallowed hard, whimpering softly as with two equally quick flicks of his hand he bared her body to his gaze. “I could stop if you like,” he added, brushing the heel of his palm lightly across the tips of her nipples.

“Well now, I never said that,” Maggie managed, as her body arched up into his touch – eager for more.  
**********************************   
Two hours later Maggie was the one sleeping peacefully, while Eliot was standing in the doorway to her kitchen – clad only in the jeans he’d been wearing the night before and fighting with himself as to whether or not he should go back and ask permission before presuming to work in her space. Normally it wouldn’t have bothered him. Most of the women he’d taken to bed in his life weren’t anywhere near as committed to the art of cooking as he was; as a rule, they were more than happy to let him walk in and take over for a morning or two.

At first glance, Maggie’s kitchen seemed to tell the same story. She was intelligent, artistic and monied, with cutting edge taste – it was exactly what any decorator worth their commission would have talked her into. Looking around the space though, Eliot’s practiced eye saw evidence of extensive use: metal and ceramic that wasn’t as bright as it had been on day one, the occasional burn mark, and old stains that hadn’t quite come all the way clean. This was a space that already had a master, which meant that no matter how pure his intentions, he would be intruding.

 _Could just wake her up,_ he thought, and suddenly the idea of putting a meal together with a partner like Maggie was all he could think of.

“Idiot,” he muttered, shaking his head as he forced himself across the threshold. He wasn’t staying. He couldn’t stay – hell, he wasn’t even entirely sure why he’d ended up here, and since Maggie knew the truth about him now, Eliot was even less sure why she’d let him in.

What he could do, and what he did know, was that working within the framework Maggie had set up he could make her a brunch worthy of what she had given him.

 _Eggs…fresh spinach…mushrooms…_ Putting on his mental ‘chef hat’ quickly centered Eliot, quieting the voices in his head. In a kitchen, creating rather than destroying, he could almost imagine he was human again – that the monster was caged for good.

 _Nate gave you that._ But he’d taken it away too – almost as quickly. Deep down, Eliot understood that he was reaching a point where he was going to have to look at how he felt about that too. He exhaled softly in the middle of measuring out a half-cup of cream, realizing that his hands were trembling faintly. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d had a case of the shakes, and every one of those times had been when he wasn’t sure about what he was doing or the choices he was making.

He needed to retreat. Needed to go to ground some place where he wouldn’t be found until he was ready. He’d done it plenty of times before – there was no reason to think it wouldn’t be the answer to his current dilemma.

The fact that he only registered Maggie’s presence in the doorway as she was drawing breath to speak shattered every one of Eliot’s remaining delusions on how he was doing and what he needed to do next. _And she knows it too,_ he realized as he turned to acknowledge her and saw far too much of the wrong kind of understanding in her eyes.

“I’m guessing you don’t get snuck up on often,” she said, coming in as far as the butcher-block prep table. “And when you do it usually ends badly.”

“I knew it was you,” Eliot retorted - _trying to reassure her or himself?_ “You weren’t in any danger.”  
******************************  
After a heartbeat of indecision, Maggie decided not to challenge him on his assessment of how ‘safe’ she was. Looking past him, at the breakfast-in-progress, she shifted tracks. “This looks like one of two things,” she said carefully. “It’s either the culinary equivalent of cash on the bedside table, or…”

“What? No!” Eliot exclaimed. She’d clearly startled him. “It’s…more of a thank you, than anything else.”

 _Is he blushing?_ she wondered, incredulous as their eyes met again. It was difficult to tell in the early morning light, but Maggie suspected that if he was, that was something else he didn’t do often.

“Cooking is…it’s kind of my thing,” Eliot told her, shrugging. “This was a way I could say ‘thank you’ for letting me in, last night. I know you didn’t have to.” 

Maggie’s breath caught in her throat as she saw another flash of that same vulnerability. _Is he doing it on purpose?_ “Well,” she said, smiling slyly at him as she came around the table, “as I recall you made a very persuasive argument.” The same heat was back in his eyes as she stepped in close. “You didn’t mention Nate once.”

The spell was broken, and Eliot dissolved into self-conscious laughter. “Figured it would be counter-productive.” Putting his arms around her, he pulled her in close. “The whole point was to keep you from slamming the door in my face.” Leaning in, he kissed her.

Moaning softly, Maggie let herself melt into his embrace. Eliot Spencer was many things – chief among them in that moment was a very good kisser.

They stayed like that for several moments, his mouth covering hers until Maggie was light-headed. Then, with a small grunt of effort, he lifted her in his arms and sat her on the edge of the table. “So,” Maggie asked, as Eliot finally let her draw a decent breath, “what kind of argument are you making now?” Spreading her thighs, she let him press in close as his nimble fingers fumbled with the knot on her robe. “Seems to me you’re putting a lot of faith in the strength of this table.”

“Trust me,” he countered, as her robe came open and his hands slid across her bare skin. Calloused fingers dug softly into the flesh of her hips, and before Maggie could react he went to his knees in front of her.

 _Shit! Shit!_ Maggie’s head fell back, her mouth open in a wordless cry of pleasure as he went to work. Her hands scrabbled desperately for a moment, eventually gripping his head – threading her fingers into the tangle of his hair. Eliot made a small sound of his own as she tightened her grip, and the part of Maggie’s brain that still functioned with any coherency clocked that he enjoyed having his hair pulled.

 _”Trust me.”_ She had no reason to do as he asked. Certainly, no reason to open her home to a man like Eliot Spencer, least of all welcome him into her bed, but he made her feel alive in ways she hadn’t known in years. An image of Nate rose unbidden in her mind, but before Maggie could banish him herself Eliot twisted his tongue across a particularly sensitive length of flesh, driving all remaining conscious thought from her mind.

Time slipped away, became meaningless as her first orgasm bled into a second, a third, and the beginnings of a fourth. As she was hovering on the edge of unconsciousness, Maggie felt Eliot withdraw, pushing to his feet and gathering her up into his arms again. “Sorry,” he murmured, but she could feel him smiling as he pressed a kiss to her hair. “You distracted me.”

Leaning back until she could see him clearly, Maggie raised an eyebrow. “I just want to know how you think an omelet is going to top something like this.”

His answering grin was as wicked as anything Maggie had ever seen. “You haven’t tried my cooking yet.”


End file.
